The present invention relates to a conveying element for conveying wafer receptacles between a conveyor means and a loading station of a manufacturing system in semiconductor industry, with the conveying element being adaptable to the conveyor system and/or the loading station. The invention moreover relates to a conveyor means for conveying wafer receptacles to a loading station and away from a loading station in a manufacturing system in semiconductor industry, and eventually the invention relates to a corresponding loading station. The invention finally relates to a method of conveying a wafer receptacle from a conveyor means to a loading station and in the opposite direction.
Appropriate conveyor means, which may also be conveyor carriages, for instance, in particular, are common in the chip-manufacturing industry. Such conveyor carriages serve to convey wafer receptacles (commonly named FOUP, Front Opening Unified Pod). It is necessary to move appropriate wafer receptacles, which are loaded, for instance, with 25 wafers by means of an appropriate equipmentxe2x80x94with a corresponding receptacle weighing 9 kilograms in the event that 300-mm wafers are loadedxe2x80x94because in compliance with the SEMI E 47.1 standard such receptacles are too heavy to be handled frequently by means. Such handling would violate the SEMI S8 standard in particular.
The wafer receptacles must be carried into loading or charging stations of the semiconductor manufacturing machinery for introducing the appropriate wafers into the production line or from removing finished wafers therefrom, respectively. As has been roughly indicted above, the wafer receptacles are too heavy for manual handling and particularly for a frequent rotating movement in the hip region. Furthermore, a manual operation or manual handling, respectively, is complicated and time-consuming and therefore expensive.
It is common to transfer appropriate wafer receptacles onto conveyor carriages by means of machinery whereupon the conveyor carriage is moved to a loading station either manually or automatically for docking or fastening, respectively, to the loading station. It is common to provide holding rails for appropriate fastening, which are mounted on the floor. Docking or connecting the conveyor carriage by means of the floor-mounted holding rails is very difficult particularly in ultra-clean rooms because the operators are completely dressed in protective clothing and can hardly see the floor and hence the connecting elements as such. Moreover, in correspondence with prior art a transfer mechanism of the wafer receptacle is provided on the conveyor carriage, which is present in the form of a complex lever mechanism.
It is the objective of the present invention to create some means facilitating the work of the operators or to provide an automatic device which can be used to transfer the loaded wafer receptacles rapidly from a conveyor carriage to a loading station or from a loading station to a conveyor carriage in a simple manner. The invention has the further objective to provide a method which allows for a simple and safe transfer of wafer receptacles without exposing the operators to any potential health hazard.